the manufactured photo surface is urbane

it covers the entire surface

it offers immense image facility

But selective coating creates marks

where the emulsion is not even

motifs, symbols, appear

where it pools deeper or thinner as

the brush curves across the surface

where the pressure from the hand changes

the bristles separate

the brush runs dry - then thick again

where the stroke curves in elegance

or breaks sharp

in a bend

or stops

dead

where it creates an aporian emulsion

Between the surface Between the surface

Lloyd Godman 1996

Aporian Emulsions - "fragments between the surface"

The bold motifs, brush strokes across the paper are based on a variety of sources: grave markers from Port Ross in the Auckland Islands, the beacon on the Amherst Spar, coastlines, the southern convergence, meterological depressions, ocean vessels, objects of navigation etc. Nail's of the Crucifixion, St Sebastian's Arrows, Alchemic symbols. They speak loudly and dominate the page.

Both these bolder designs/motifs and the more delicate sounds, the intricate details infused within them relate to earlier projects: "Codes of Survival" 1990-92 , "Evidence from the Religion of Technology" 1994 and even further back to the obscure references of "Symbols" 1986-9. A discourse is carried forward with older references, and from this further evolution a signature emerges, a cryptic visual vernacular.

The finer details, fragments between the surface, reference different items; discarded debris, artifacts of existence both from the natural organic world and the manufactured. They investigate the veiled expanse between discarded and useless rubbish and significant cultural artifact salvaged from an archaeological site: the utilised spent and worthless, and the utilised once abandoned but now valued. As the image replaces the object and becomes a new surrogate, secondary artifact, translation is an archaeological episode, a piecing together of evidence from the position and experience of the viewer, a site of personal investigation, discovery.

But these images are more complex than the simplicity of motif and detail would suggest, and process is central to this complexity.

They are made by mixing various chemicals and selectively painting the resulting emulsions on to sheets of paper in semi-darkness, then (after it is dry) making photograms by laying objects on the paper and exposing the resulting combination to sunlight for up to several hours in some cases. The following short essay discusses various issues presented by the process.

Physical existence relies on the hiatus between subjects, evidence of existence relies on the imprintation of the subject and acknowledgement of existence on survival of the artifact with consequent access.

Separation into defined entities permits identification, permits classification, spaces between similar entities permit confirmation of individual status, spaces between objects imprinted on the emulsion, spaces between the strokes of emulsion itself separate objects by a different means. Like islands in an ocean; coastlines where the ocean is aporian. Vast areas of unreferenced territory or music with intervals of silence that are an integral part of the composition. A place where the spaces survey the result of mark-making, a place of absence, a place of presence. An emulsion of destiny.

Recording permits recognition in a post-object circumstance, that which was evidenced for the future but no longer exists. All physical entities have this potential, but providence and choice decide which articles are transcribed for the future and which miss the boundaries of the recording medium. Those exterior to this domain, the facsimile, are excluded for ever, we assume they are either unimportant or never existed.Acknowledgment is the consequential act. The site where surviving secondary artifacts are decoded, where the mystery of the image reveals an infinity of interpretations. Access to the site is an act of empowerment, it gives a rationale to the process and the documentive artifact.

While marks in themselves can represent a variety of meaning; motifs like nails from the crucifixion, arrows of St Sebastian, that we recognizes as Christian artifacts with established meaning and significance; and alchemic symbols that have another set of established codes are difficult to escape. Using these motifs with over laid intricate details of other symbols, artifacts with another set of codes suggests a new meaning, a different crucifixion for instance, a different alchemy. A crucifixion where nails are driven into a larger body, where arrow after arrow are shot into a different flesh. An alchemy, where like a photo sensitive emulsion, the effect lies latent, detach from the cause only to reveal itself at a much later time as symbols, evidence in the ozone.

The boundaries of recorded existence create the barriers where the secondary artifact concludes and the aporian emulsion initiate an imaginative dialogue, suggestion replaces actuality. The incomplete are completed while the unreferenced may never begin. It is not that they never existed but they were never referenced. It is where a similar entity could be, but because there is no reference, doubt remains. Total lack of reference creates uncertainty, the thought of their existence might never occur, or if it does uncertainty remains. Presence/absence creates contradiction, confrontation/contestation. There is engagement between the presence of the bold marks created by the chemical emulsion and absence in the aporian emulsion where the sensitiser was never applied, the primary artifacts never referenced.

Historically there has been an emphasis on a complete and smooth application of these emulsions on the surface of the page to maximise the recording of detail. Fully refined we have the familiar photographic surface, complete, urbane and rectangularly defined, there is also another potential, one that embraces selective coating, one where the emulsion creates marks, motifs, symbols, one where the emulsion is not even, where it pools deeper or thinner as the brush curves across the surface, where the pressure from the hand changes, the bristles separate, the brush runs dry. Each print contains a unique emulsion that can not be repeated, an emulsion where the uncoated gaps challenge the sensitised marks penetrating the fibres of the paper, an "Aporian Emulsion".

The flow of an emulsion can pursue inexhaustible courses, a controlled course, a random course, or so many courses that it becomes a single plane and obliterates reference to any course at all. Where the line of emulsion flows is in the hand of the maker, and when that emulsion is sensitive to radiation, the potential to record detail and intricacy, to imply more complex meaning is augmented. To coat these papers in a safe light the environment can be dim. The process of coating the paper creates uncertainty of where one has been, a semi-blind course charted by a semi-visible line in a half light.

The measuring, mixing and coating of the hand-made emulsion is a different archaeology, it explores the earliest layers of photography when science and magic danced at the discovery of the photographic medium. There is a ritual involved that places the maker in a scientist-sorcerer-like role where science and cabalistic forces meet in a homage to Daguerre, Fox Talbot, Bayard, Atkins, Herschel, it relates to the primitive history of photography an alchemy of image-making. Here the maker is more responsible for the whole process, a process that can change the existing world, a magic that can fix a facsimile on the page. 150 years later it still holds a special power, a power that is revelationary and relevant for any individual to rediscover in a contemporary environment.

There is the implication that because the image is seen and we know that light affects photographic materials the same holds true for these emulsions. Light is inextricably linked to our vision, light is central to photography and the resulting image is accessed through this phenomenon, light. But when the emulsion is activated by another source of radiation beyond the visual spectrum, the resulting image is intangibly different, something of the photographic is removed, something distinctive is associated with this other process. The cause is outside our vision, the effect within. The cause is aporian, and selective application of the emulsion creates voids that expand this. There is a space between the commercial traditional silver gelatin emulsion and the alchemy of these processes.

These emulsions react to ultra violet not light, like infrared and x- rays they contain another vision beyond our sight. In each case we see the effect but not the cause. Because of this they cannot be exposed in a camera, the negatives (or in the case of the photogram) objects imprint themselves in contact with the emulsion. There is no means (or necessity) to enlarge the object as with the traditional photograph, the size reference of the object is printed on to the emulsion. With the camera, the act of taking a photograph can be reduced to fractions of a second but with sun printing the aporian emulsion, the exposure can range from 10 minutes to several hours. In this time, the source of energy that drives the process arches across the sky and the angles of rays and shadows played onto the emulsion change. The object are less distinct on the page, each appears to have an aura that vibrates a light as a reference to its creating force. There is variation beyond prediction. With the traditional silver gelatin emulsion, there is a period of absence, latency, when the image exists but is hidden; with aporian emulsions the image reveals itself imprinted on the emulsion through variation of colour, there is a presence immediately after the exposure.
But these images contain another degree of randomness that makes them unique: the intricacy of the photogram. It is a method of photogenic drawing that leaves singular imprints, unique is the tracery imprinted on the paper. The selection and placement of objects, primary artifacts from a material world, is a transitional one creating comparable but distinctive markings. Each circumstance is different, each image unique. Like the emulsion itself, the photogram is an ancient artifact from the site of photographic invention. It pays homage to Fox Talbot's earliest experiments, to Anna Atkins and her largely unacknowledged works where she created a large body of cyanotypes using plants laid on the emulsion, where she created the first book of photographs, where she used a photographic process to record scientific information, where she remained silent and never became a drowned woman. It also plays homage to the mid layers of artifacts that Christian Schad, Man Ray and Moholy Nagy left behind when they rediscovered the technique and attached a different rhetoric of meaning.

The Aporian emulsions is one with gaps, holes, where nothing is certain, where objects and artifacts appear and dissolve, where the future meets the past, where a maker can experiment with uncertainty of process and discover a new language for self and object in state of presence and absence.

Lloyd Godman 1996